To hold that ancient
reports of human experience (set aside in holy books)
are the sole basis of scientific knowledge is, of course,
ridiculous, But to hold, because some records of ancient
human experience have been previously set aside as holy
books, that they cannot now be used to demonstrate the source
of careless metaphysical assumptions by the human race - is equally
ridiculous. - A. M. Paterson,
"Velikovsky Versus Academic Lag (The Problem of Hypothesis),"
KRONOS111:2 (1977), p. 125. [Reprinted from PSA 1974, R. S.
Cohen, et al., eds. (Reidel, Dortrecht-Holland, 1976), pp. 487­498.1

It is widely known that the Aztecs of Mexico experienced great anxiety each time a 52-year Venus-cycle
neared its completion. But what, precisely, was it that they were afraid of?

During the five useless days
(nemontemi) of the final year the people let their fires go out
and destroyed their household furniture. Fasting and lamentation were
the order of the day while the populace awaited catastrophe. Pregnant women
were shut up in granaries, lest they be changed into wild animals, and
children were marched up and down and kept awake, for fear that sleep on the
fatal evening would result in their turning into rats.(1)

The uniformitarian author of
this passage, the late Dr. G. C. Vaillant, could not have suspected how much
valuable information for the catastrophist he was compressing into
these few sentences. For here, we have nothing else less than a partial
list of the possible traumatic effects of the Venusian cataclysm of ca. 1450
B.C. proposed by Velikovsky in Worlds in Collision (Part 1: Venus).
While the passage is doubtless amenable to varying interpretations, it
seems reasonable to assume that pregnant women aborted, and that many
people alternated between periods of profound stupor and periods of frenzied
activity. In other words, they alternated between "sleeping" and behaving
like "wild animals."

Let us examine, first of all,
some textbook descriptions of catatonic schizophrenia:

In the first or catatonic type of schizophrenia the mechanism of defense is
denial. The patient, whose ego is melting away, whose sense of reality is
disappearing, who can no longer think or concentrate, will deny this
terrifying process in one of two ways: either by becoming over-active and
excited in an attempt to push the world away, or by withdrawing from the
world into himself. The one kind of denial, known as catatonic excitement
or furor, is indeed a true furor; the patients are really maniacal.
When lay persons think of someone, going crazy, running amok, they have this
kind of insanity in mind ...

The other way of denying the disintegration of the personality is to withdraw to a
state of absolute silence and isolation in which the world is shut out
rather than pushed out. In this mute type of catatonic schizophrenia
patients refuse to open their mouths to be fed and do not respond at all to
questions. They frequently exhibit the state of cerea
flexibilitas, or waxy flexibility, in which their hands, feet, or whole
body can be put in postures which will be maintained for a long time.(2)

A catatonic patient may have repeated episodes of stupor without
excitement or excitement without stupor, or he may dramatically and
unpredictably swing from one extreme to the other. Although the
pattern of motor activity has some similarity to that
observed in manic-depression, the specific motor symptoms of the
catatonic have some unique features . . . The pupils of the eyes may
show irregular contraction and dilation, or the eyelids
may be tightly closed [emphasis added] . . . In the excited
state, he becomes extremely agitated and destructive. He is likely
to destroy furniture, tear his clothes, assault others, or injure
and mutilate himself.(3)

It appears, then, that the shattering and prolonged trauma of cosmic catastrophe could
produce psychological states which were strikingly similar to those
which we classify today as catatonic schizophrenia. But the Aztecs
were not the only people to remember what had happened to their
ancestors during periods of cataclysm:

Isaiah 9. 19 (RSV): Through the wrath of the Lord of hosts the land
is burned, and the people are like fuel for the fire; no man spares
his brother.

Isaiah 13. 13-15: Therefore I will make the heavens tremble, and the
earth will be shaken out of its place, at the wrath of the Lord of
hosts in the day of his fierce anger. And like a hunting gazelle .
. . every man will turn to his own people, and every man will flee
to his own land, Whoever is found will be thrust through, and
whoever is caught will fall by the sword.

Zephaniah 1.14-17: The great day of the Lord is near, near and
hastening fast . . . A day of wrath is that day, a day of distress
and anguish, a day of ruin and devastation, a day of darkness and
gloom, a day of clouds and thick darkness, a day of trumpet blast
and battle cry . . . I will bring distress on men, so that they
shall walk like the blind, [emphasis added] because they have
sinned against the Lord; their blood shall be poured out like dust,
and their flesh like dung.

Haggai 2.20-22: The word of the Lord came a second time to Haggai on
the twenty-fourth day of the month, "Speak to Zerubbabel, governor
of Judah, saying, I am about to shake the heavens and the earth, and
to overthrow the throne of kingdoms; I am about to destroy the
strength of the kingdoms of the nations, and overthrow the chariots
and their riders; and the horses and their riders shall go down,
everyone by the sword of his fellow . . . "

Zechariah 12.4: On that day, says the Lord, I will strike every
horse with panic, and its rider with madness . . .

Zechariah 14.13: And on that day a great panic from the Lord shall
fall on them, so that each will lay hold on the hand of his fellow,
and the hand of the one will be raised against the band of the other
. . .

Thus did the prophets
of Israel remember in their eschatological visions how their
ancestors had engaged in frenzied slaughterings while in a state
similar to that of catatonic furor, or had "walked like the blind" -
an accurate if incomplete description of the slow and shuffling
locomotion of the mute but mobile catatonic. (In the true prophetic
vision, the prophet does not know that he is remembering ancient
events. Since racial memories reside in the Jungian collective
unconscious, whose sense of chronology is just as poor as that of
the individual unconscious from which ordinary dreams proceed, the
prophet naturally interprets his vision to be a warning from God
that cosmic catastrophe is imminent.)

But with which cosmic
catastrophe are we to associate this murderous panic and this
"walking like the blind?" The following passage, in which Moses
warns his people of what will happen to them in the land of Canaan
if they do not obey all the commandments and statutes of the Lord,
makes it clear that these psychological phenomena had accompanied
the advent of the Venus-comet and the resultant "plagues of Egypt":

Deuteronomy 28-27-29: "The Lord will smite you with the boils of
Egypt, and with the ulcers and the scurvy and the itch, of which you
cannot be healed. The Lord will smite you with madness and
blindness and confusion of mind; and you shall grope at
noonday, as the blind grope in darkness . . . " [emphasis
added]

But in the interest of
fairness, we should present the uniformitarian interpretation of the
bizarre fears of the Aztecs upon the completion of a Venus-cycle:

They [the Aztecs] thought of the change from one cycle to another as
the death of one life and the beginning of a new one. The
realization that nature could withhold the continuance of their
existence endowed the ritual with profound solemnity.(4)

In other words, since
Venus—as we are assured by the high priests of astronomy—has
been for untold aeons nailed securely into its present Newtonian
orbit, the fears of the Aztecs associated with that beautiful and
placid body could not possibly have been grounded in any
objective racial experience. Instead, their fears were nothing
more than an exaggerated and ritualized reflection of their
"realization that nature could withhold the continuance of their
existence." Thus does his lack of the correct world view force the
uniformitarian scholar to manifest his brilliance in mere cleverness—in little ad hoc explanations bearing no reference
whatsoever to any underlying or unifying hypothesis.

Since Dr. Vaillant
died in 1945, five years before the appearance of Worlds in
Collision, he cannot justly be criticized for having
participated in the ad hoc game of the uniformitarians. The
same extenuation, however, cannot be advanced for the cultural
anthropologist who wrote in 1970:

All
through contact times, the Apapocuva Guarani have been haunted by a
fear of impending world destruction - a supernatural symbol,
perhaps, of their concurrent fate, though this same fear was
indigenous among Pacific coast Indians of the present United States
also. Their shamans rescued them from these fears again and again,
teaching them dances that would bring believers to an earthly
paradise . . . Some shamans led holy wars against the Spaniards,
whose rule they announced had ended; and some led the tribe from its
home territory to seek the legendary Land Without Evil.(5)

Near the center of the area over which the Prophet Dance later was
to spread, lived the Southern Okanagon. This apprehensive tribelet
believed that falling stars, earthquakes, and other anomalous events
in nature were all signs of the coming destruction of the world.(6)

The
Modoc greatly feared the world's end. Every year in the fall they
danced at the coming of the aurora borealis. This was the sky on
fire, set by Kumukamts the Creator, his son, and Red Fox. Its smoke
or flames would cause incurable sickness . . . Then they danced to
ward off the great burning of the world, lest the earth catch flame
from the sky at the edge of the world, and make deep fires to
consume them all from beneath the ground. The Modoc also greatly
fear the dreams that come in their anti-sunwise shuffle dance, and
sometimes faint from these dreams. But they must dance on to
prevent the world's end.(7)

Another striking case comes from another far center of the world.
At the end of August 1934, a Maori of the village of Waitarata in
New Zealand, dreamed that the world was coming to an end. For a
week the whole village prepared for the cataclysm which would send
them to their ancestors. The dreamer who had seen the angel and
heard its message was a hero to his people.(8)

Note that the author's
recognition of the widespread existence of fear of world destruction
(or of the joyful anticipation of it that comes with the prophetic
vision) among primitive peoples does not prevent him from attempting
to explain away the fear of the Guarani. He infers that what they
were really afraid of was destruction by the Spaniards, and that
their fear of world destruction was nothing more than a symbolic
reflection of this real fear.

It is fascinating to
observe that the psychiatrists have hit upon precisely the same
method of disposing of fear of world destruction as have the
anthropologists:

As
the sense of reality disappears in the schizophrenic patient, panic
and Weltuntergang dreams appear . . . Since the experience of
losing the sense of reality is indeed terrifying, it is no surprise
that many schizophrenics develop tremendous fear. Panic would be a
more accurate description of their terror . . . Weltuntergangdreams, which emerge as the sense of reality is lost by the
schizophrenic patient, are dreams of catastrophe, of a "world going
under," as the German term implies. One patient dreamt of an
earthquake in New York City and of all the buildings crumbling and
sinking into a bottomless pit . . . These dreams are completely
characteristic of the disease at this stage.(9)

The
inner perception of the loss of object relationships causes,
according to Freud, the fantasy frequently met with in the early
stages of schizophrenia: that the world is coming to an end. The
patients who experience such a feeling are correct, in a sense; so
far as they are concerned, the objective world has actually broken
down.(10)

The
idea that the world is coming to an end, or has already done so, is
one which is frequently met in schizophrenics, particularly in the
early stages of the illness. This idea may take the form of a fixed
delusion or of an anxious obsession. In its details this idea
varies tremendously. Earthquakes, floods, wars, revolutions or
pestilences may be held responsible, or specific descriptive
details may be entirely lacking. At times the destruction is
represented by lesser catastrophes in which nations, or merely
cities are destroyed. These ideas have in common that large masses
of people are wiped out, usually the whole human race. Often
variations of this occur in the same patient.(11)

In other words,
disintegration of the ego is what is really frightening the
schizophrenic, and this real fear is merely symbolized or reflected
by his illusory fear of world destruction.

Yet - ironically
enough - it is the uniformitarian psychiatrist who, in describing
the logical system of the schizophrenic, unwittingly directs us to
the past and to the collective unconscious as the
probable sources of the world-destruction fantasy, just as they are
in the case of the prophetic vision:

The
way in which schizophrenic patients use concepts and words is by no
means always disorderly. There is, as a matter of fact, a definite
order in their thinking but it does not obey the laws of our
"normal" logic. Schizophrenic logic is identical with primitive,
magical thinking, that is, with a form of thinking that also is
found in the unconscious of neurotics, in small children, in normal
persons under conditions of fatigue, as "antecedents" of thought,
and in primitive man. It is the archaic way of thinking . . .

Schizophrenics, for example, show an intuitive understanding of
symbolism. Interpretations of symbols. . .are made spontaneously
and as a matter of course by schizophrenics. Symbolic thinking for
them is not merely a method of distortion but actually their archaic
type of thinking.(12)

We have now described
two groups of people in whom the fear of world destruction is
conscious — the primitives and the schizophrenics. These
people remember something that we - the "civilized" and the sane" -
have forgotten, namely, that great world destruction has frequently
come from the skies. And how do we honor the retention of this
ancient wisdom? We characterize it as incontrovertible proof that
the primitives are "superstitious" and the schizophrenics are
"insane." Now let us consider how the psychiatrist handles the
problem of guilt for having "caused" a catastrophe. We paraphrase
from notes and memory some remarks made by Dr. Karl A. Menninger to
Edwin Newman in the course of a PBS telecast of April 1, 1974:

Sometimes patients come to me complaining that they cannot sleep,
that they feel guilty of having caused the California earthquake or
some other disaster. I explain to them that they must really be
feeling guilty of something else, and I help them discover what that is.

Of course Dr.
Menninger can always locate some other source of guilt. Is there
any normal person among us who does not feel guilty of at least two
things at any given time? In actuality, Dr. Menninger will never be
able to help his patients understand fully why they feel guilty of
having caused disaster until he abandons uniformitarianism and
accepts the reality of man's inherited assumption of guilt for
having produced—through the commission of sin—the cosmic
catastrophes of the past.

Finally, let us
observe how the psychiatrist handles the problem of the fear of
causing world destruction:

In
catatonic schizophrenia extremes of violent motor excitement or
rigid immobility dominate the picture. Onset is often abrupt. The
patient may maintain difficult postures for hours, days, or months
and requires complete care. Alternation between extreme excitement
and rigidity may occur. Frequently these patients are in the midst
of some mystical experience, believing themselves in heaven or
hell; they are often immobile and refuse to speak because thy
believe any movement or word can produce a universal catastrophe.(13)

In
addition to motor symptoms, the catatonic displays typical
schizophrenic thinking and affect. While either stuporous or
excited, he experiences vivid fantasies, fears and hallucinations.
He has delusions that are sometimes of a cosmic nature, e.g., "The
world will come to an end if I move."(14)

Thus fear that he
might cause world catastrophe is just something the catatonic
"believes." After all, he is insane, isn't he? — and who knows what
weird delusion or fantasy he may come up with next?

Again and again we
have seen the anthropologists and the psychiatrists refuse to
recognize that ideas of world destruction might have any meaning
other than as symbols or reflections of some other idea or effect.
Indeed, one might suspect that we have here an example of the
operation of the Velikovskian collective scotoma—the
characteristic and persistent inability of the uniformitarian to
draw any conclusion from his observations which would logically
cause him to doubt the correctness of his world view.

To sum up the
principal finding of this article, we have shown that the
disintegration of objective reality during cosmic catastrophe
could produce subjective states similar to those of
schizophrenia, and that the disintegration of subjective reality in
the schizophrenic is accompanied by visions of cosmic catastrophe.
These observations suggest to us that there may well exist a
relationship between the cosmic catastrophes of the past and
catatonic schizophrenia. Precisely what this relationship might be,
however, will require the attentions of some catastrophically
oriented Jungian psychiatrist.

One final point, it
occurs to us that perhaps the theologians and the students of
religion might find something provocative in our juxtaposition of
materials from the fields of anthropology, religion, and
psychiatry. After all, does not the Bible state repeatedly that
world destructions were punishment for sin? And does not sin
produce guilt? And are not guilt and fear the two sides of the same
coin? And is not the catatonic mute and immobile for fear of
producing world destruction? And while his shattered ego is
permitting visions of cosmic catastrophe to come welling up from his
collective unconscious, is he not in the midst of a mystical experience?

But perhaps we are
being presumptuous in suggesting to the modern theologian that he
might profit from taking the Bible a little more seriously than is his wont.

13. "Schizophrenia," International Encyclopedia of the
Social Sciences (Macmillan, 1968), XIV, 44-45.

14. Rosen and Gregory, p. 316.

After completing the present article on Schizophrenia and the Fear of World
Destruction, there came to our attention a recent work by Joseph
Campbell(1) which gives added support to the thesis advocated in this article.

In 1968, Campbell had
occasion to receive the reprint of a 1962 paper on schizophrenia
published by Dr. John W. Perry in the Annals of the New
York Academy of Sciences. Much to his "considerable amazement,"
Campbell "learned, on reading it, that the imagery of schizophrenic
fantasy perfectly matches that of the mythological hero journey,
which [he] had outlined and elucidated, back in 1949, in The Hero
with a Thousand Faces."(2)

My own had been a work based on a comparative study of the mythologies
of mankind, with only here and there passing references to the
phenomenology of dream, hysteria, mystic visions, and the like.
Mainly, it was an organization of themes and motifs common to all
mythologies; and I had had no idea, in bringing these together, of
the extent to which they would correspond to the fantasies of
madness. According to MY thinking, they were the universal,
archetypal, psychologically based symbolic themes and motifs of all
traditional mythologies; and now from this paper of Dr. Perry I was
learning that the same symbolic figures arise spontaneously from the
broken-off, tortured state of mind of modern individuals suffering
from a complete schizophrenic breakdown: the condition of one who
has lost touch with the life and thought of his community and is
compulsively fantasizing out of his own completely cut-off base.

Very briefly: The usual pattern is first, of a break away or
departure from the local social order and context; next, a long,
deep retreat inward and backward, backward, as it were, in time, and
inward, deep into the psyche; a chaotic series of encounters there,
darkly terrifying experiences, and presently (if the victim is
fortunate) encounters of a centering kind, fulfilling, harmonizing,
giving new courage; and then finally, in such fortunate cases, a
return journey of rebirth to life. And that is the universal
formula also of the mythological hero journey, which 1, in my own
published work, had described as: 1) separation, 2) initiation, and
3) return:

A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of
supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and
decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious
adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.

That is the pattern of the myth, and that is the pattern of these
fantasies of the psyche.(3)

Campbell was impressed
by Dr. Perry's thesis which stated "that in certain cases the best
thing is to let the schizophrenic process run its course ... to help
the process of disintegration and reintegration along."(4)

It was Campbell's suggestion, however, that "if a doctor is to be helpful in this way,
he has to understand the image language of mythology . . . to
understand what the fragmentary signs and signals signify that his
patient . . . is trying to bring forth in order to establish some
kind of contact. Interpreted from this point of view, a
schizophrenic breakdown is an inward and backward journey to
recover something missed or lost, and to restore, thereby, a
vital balance."(5)

In his previous writings, Campbell had already noted that "among primitive hunting
peoples it is largely from the psychological experiences of shamans
that the mythic imagery and rituals of their ceremonial life
derive. The shaman is a person (either male or female) who in early
adolescence underwent a severe psychological crisis . . ."(6)

Campbell's observations find support from Anton T. Boisen who concluded nearly
four decades ago that "certain types of mental disorder and certain
types of religious experience are alike attempts at
reorganization. The difference lies in the outcome. Where the
attempt is successful and some degree of victory is won, it is
commonly recognized as religious experience. Where it is
unsuccessful or indeterminate, it is commonly spoken of as 'insanity'." (7)

Thus, "there is . . .
a definite relationship between the mystical and the pathological
which is to be explained by the fact . . . that religious concern is
invariably associated with the attempt to grapple with the vital
issues of life. And wherever the conflict is keenest, there we are
likely to find both religious and pathological manifestations."(8)

As a student of world
mythology, Campbell is especially cognizant of archetypes and their
universal existence. Adhering to Jungian analysis, Campbell
believes that man "has both an inherited biology and a personal
biography, the 'archetypes of the unconscious' being expressions of
the first . . . As the first is biological and common to the
species, so this second is biographical, socially determined, and
specific to each separate life. Most of our dreams and daily
difficulties will derive, of course, from the latter; but in a
schizophrenic plunge one descends to the 'collective,' and the
imagery there experienced is largely of the order of the
archetypes of myth."(9)

Boisen had earlier
pointed out that "schizophrenic dissociation becomes greater in the
catatonic than in other types. The regressive tendencies go deeper
and it is in this type that we find the clearest demonstration of
the 'intrauterine mind.' Such states, and early schizophrenia
generally, are to be viewed as attempts by regression to
genetically older thought processes to reintegrate masses
of life experience which had failed of structuralization into a
functional unity."(10)

It is Campbell's
contention that "the educated brain may interfere, misinterpret, and
so short-circuit" the mythological symbol which Campbell has
defined as 'an energy-evoking and directing sign'. "When that
occurs the signs no longer function as they should. The
inherited mythology is garbled, and its guiding value lost or
misconstrued."(11)

Campbell, therefore, outlines four functions "normally served by a properly operating
mythology."

1. THE MYSTICAL FUNCTION —

"to waken and maintain
in the individual a sense of awe and gratitude in relation to the
mystery dimension of the universe, not so that he lives in fear of
it, but so that he recognizes that he participates in it, since the
mystery of being is the mystery of his own deep being as well. That
is what the old Alaskan medicine man heard when Sila, the soul of
the universe, said to him, 'Be not afraid.' For, as beheld by our
temporal eyes, nature, as we have seen, is tough. terrific,
monstrous."(12) (Here follows a criticism of French existentialism.)

2. THE SECOND FUNCTION OF A LIVING MYTHOLOGY —

"to offer an image of
the universe that will be in accord with the knowledge of the time,
the sciences and the fields of action of the folk to whom the
mythology is addressed. In our day, of course, the world pictures
of all the major religions are at least two thousand years out of
date, and in that fact alone there is ground enough for a very
serious break-off. If, in a period like our own, of the greatest
religious fervor and quest, you would wonder why the churches are
losing their congregations, one large part of the answer surely is
right here. They are inviting their flocks to enter and to find
peace in a browsing-ground that never was, never will be, and in any
case is surely not that of any comer of the world today. Such a
mythological offering is a sure pill for at least a mild schizophrenia."(13)

3. THE THIRD AND FOURTH FUNCTIONS OF A LIVING MYTHOLOGY —

"to validate, support,
and imprint the norms of a given, specific moral order, that,
namely, of the society in which the individual is to live . . . to
guide him, stage by stage, in health, strength, and harmony of
spirit, through the whole foreseeable course of a useful life.,, (14)

Campbell's concluding remarks are cogent and provocative.

"In sum, then: The inward journeys of the mythological hero, the shaman,
the mystic, and the schizophrenic are in principle the same; and
when the return or remission occurs, it is experienced as a rebirth:
the birth, that is to say, of a 'twice-born' ego, no longer bound in
by its daylight-world horizon. It is now known to be but the
reflex of a larger self, its proper function being to carry the
energies of an archetypal instinct system into fruitful play in a
contemporary space-time daylight situation. One is now no longer
afraid of nature; nor of nature's child, society — which is
monstrous too, and in fact cannot be otherwise; it would otherwise
not survive. The new ego is in accord with all this, in harmony, at
peace; and, as those who have returned from the journey tell, life
is then richer, stronger, and more joyous."(15)

Of final interest is
Campbell's reference to a Royal Navy Commodore who gave a personal
account "of a schizophrenic adventure of his own, at the culmination
of which he experienced a fourth type of realization: a sense of
sheer light, the sense of a terribly dangerous, overpowering light
to be encountered and endured." To Campbell, this "account suggests
very strongly the Buddha light described in the Tibetan Book of
the Dead, which is supposed to be experienced immediately
upon death, and which, if endured, yields release from rebirth but
is for most too great to bear."(16)

Boisen, in his own
discussion of schizophrenia, reminds us that "it is important to
bear in mind that such acute disturbances are closely related to the
religious conversion experience which ever since the time of Paul of
Tarsus has figured so prominently in the work of the Christian
church. According to Starbuck's findings such conversion
experiences are likewise an eruptive breaking up of evil habits and
abnormal tastes and the turning of vital forces along new channels.
In mental disorder of this type we therefore have a manifestation of
the power that makes for health just as truly as we do in the
religious conversion experience."(17)

In short, says Campbell, "our schizophrenic patient is actually experiencing
inadvertently that same beatific ocean deep which the yogi and saint
are ever striving to enjoy: except that, whereas they are swimming
in it, he is drowning."(18) - L. M. Greenberg